"It was the only moment I heard regret slip into Otellini's voice during the several hours of conversations I had with him. 'The lesson I took away from that was, while we like to speak with data around here, so many times in my career I've ended up making decisions with my gut, and I should have followed my gut,' he said. 'My gut told me to say yes.'" The world would've been a much different place - Apple would have been less dependant on Samsung for its chips, which probably would've meant less money for Samsung to develop its Galaxy business.

The negotiations for selling StrongARM had started way back before 2005. The original acquisition from DEC had been a rocky one, and most of the talent that came with that group had left for other companies/startups. So Intel couldn't get rid of StrongARM fast enough.

Intel had made it clear that they did not intend to go into a low margin business like SoCs (Systems on Chip) at that time. Intel's own road map did not have anything at the power/performance levels for mobile/phone applications until 2010 (and in fact they are still 3 years behind some of those goals).

Intel grossly miscalculated the market, as they did not expect it to explode until past 2010. They spent basically half a decade without anything to target it, and now it may be too late.